page_title: American Museum of Natural History
section_title: Founding
hierarchical_section_title: American Museum of Natural History / History / Founding
caption_attribution_description: English: The Arsenal in Central Park Title: Annual report of the American Museum of Natural History for the year Identifier: annualreporto190708amer (find matches) Year: 1870 (1870s) Authors: American Museum of Natural History Subjects: American Museum of Natural History; Natural history museums Publisher: New York&#160;: [The Museum] Contributing Library: Smithsonian Libraries Digitizing Sponsor: Biodiversity Heritage Library View Book Page: Book Viewer About This Book: Catalog Entry View All Images: All Images From Book Click here to view book online to see this illustration in context in a browseable online version of this book. Text Appearing Before Image: ' Text Appearing After Image: ' Note About Images Please note that these images are extracted from scanned page images that may have been digitally enhanced for readability - coloration and appearance of these illustrations may not perfectly resemble the original work.
context_page_description: The American Museum of Natural History, on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, New York City, is one of the largest natural history museums in the world. In Theodore Roosevelt Park, across the street from Central Park, the museum complex comprises 26 interconnected buildings housing 45 permanent exhibition halls, in addition to a planetarium and a library. The museum collections contain over 34 million specimens of plants, animals, fossils, minerals, rocks, meteorites, human remains, and human cultural artifacts as well as specialized collections for frozen tissue and genomic and astrophysical data, of which only a small fraction can be displayed at any given time, and occupies more than 2 million square feet. The museum has a full-time scientific staff of 225, sponsors over 120 special field expeditions each year, and averages about five million visits annually.
  The one mission statement of the American Museum of Natural History is: "To discover, interpret, and disseminate—through scientific research and education—knowledge about human cultures, the natural world, and the universe."
context_section_description: Before construction of the present complex, the museum was housed in the Arsenal building in Central Park. Theodore Roosevelt, Sr., the father of Theodore Roosevelt, the 26th U.S. President, was one of the founders along with John David Wolfe, William T. Blodgett, Robert L. Stuart, Andrew H. Green, Robert Colgate, Morris K. Jesup, Benjamin H. Field, D. Jackson Steward, Richard M. Blatchford, J. P. Morgan, Adrian Iselin, Moses H. Grinnell, Benjamin B. Sherman, A. G. Phelps Dodge, William A. Haines, Charles A. Dana, Joseph H. Choate, Henry G. Stebbins, Henry Parish, and Howard Potter. The founding of the museum realized the dream of naturalist Dr. Albert S. Bickmore. Bickmore, a one-time student of zoologist Louis Agassiz, lobbied tirelessly for years for the establishment of a natural history museum in New York. His proposal, backed by his powerful sponsors, won the support of the Governor of New York, John Thompson Hoffman, who signed a bill officially creating the American Museum of Natural History on April 6, 1869.
caption: The American Museum of Natural History was housed in the Arsenal from 1869 until 1877.
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